China and India Shrink Slums

This item includes a chart that helps with the fine detail of mapping the general global move up the economic S curve that has so rocked all the global economy. The only countries not actively participating in a rush to build a healthy middle class economy are out two perennial communist regimes of Cuba and North Korea. However, catch up in both will be extraordinarily fast once the system changes. They both have a prepared population.

Unprepared populations are still proceeding in a positive direction and the numbers are accelerating. Even rejectionist societies such as those of Islam are finding sufficient active players to establish some growth. Everywhere else, folks are discovering micro banking and similar ideas to build with.

In a century, I suspect that we will largely see true poverty off, if not a great deal sooner. But just seeing these trends to completion will do it all.

Recall in these statistics that every twenty years brings a complete new generation far better prepared that the past generation. That is the natural super juice in this picture. A bright young boy discovers a way out of the slum and his whole family is uplifted.

* China improved the daily conditions of 65.3 million urban residents who were deprived of shelter

* China’s urban population living in slums fell from 37.3 percent in 2000 to some 28.2 percent in 2010, a relative decrease of 25 percent

* 227 million people in the world have moved out of slum conditions since 2000 but at the same time 55 million new slum dwellers were added

* the number of people living in slums rose from 777 million in 2000 to 830 million in 2010. Unless urgent steps are taken, UN-HABITAT warned, that number could rise to 900 million in 2020 (Since there was net migration out the increase is from births inside slums)

* India has lifted 59.7 million people out of slums conditions since 2000. Slum prevalence fell from 41.5 percent in 1990 to 28.1 percent in 2010.

China's strategy of enabling slum dwellers to gain access to more than 20 million new and affordable housing units has been particularly successful. “The state did this by using equity grants as a mortgage to get leases on cheap housing built by developers and by giving developers special tax rates to encourage development of cheap homes

* the top 25 cities accounted for roughly 15% of the world’s GDP in 2005. This share increases to around one-quarter of the world’s GDP when the top 100 cities are included

* In India and China, the five largest cities were about 15% of national GDP in 2004, which was roughly three times what could have been expected based solely on their relative shares of the population